WI the Japanese use WMD's against Pearl Harbor

I'm unaware of any protests during the war about firebombing Tokyo, which BTW killed more people that Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
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If you look at contemporary accounts in magazines like "Time" and "Life" you will see that these raids were invariably presented as attacks on dispersed war production sites and so forth. The firebombing of Tokyo, just like the RAF firebombings of Hamburg, etc., could be portayed as attacks on the infrastructure necessary to prolong the enemys' war effort (including worker residences) because bombs either blow stuff up or burn it. You're correct that in the popular mind, German and Japanese civilians had it coming so the massive loss of life was no big deal. But there is a difference when you gas people and give them diseases. It's plainly obviously at that point that your sole aim is killing people and the allies consistently tried to portray themselves in their internal and external propaganda as better than that (so did the Germans for that matter, but that's another story). I'd argue that massed chemical and biological attacks on Japanese cities would ultimately provoke far more revulsion than the atomic bombs. A-bombs blow stuff up and destroy factories...and Hiroshima was referred to as a major industrial center.

You are right, there were no protests about the bombings in the modern sense of "protest". I am aware, however, that people did write "letters to the editor" carefully expressing some moral concerns about city bombing and similar joint letters were sent from universites, etc.
 
Yes, very much so.



OK, I've been as guilty as everybody else talking up the "depopulated japan" outcome, but seriosuly, would this really be politically possible for an open society that believed it was a "shining light" to the world? Regardless of whether we are talking about Japanese use of chemical/biological agents at Pearl Harbor or in balloon bombs, the human damage of either attack would be relatively light. US Propagandists could always claim (and did) that massed USAAF and RAF bombing of Germany and Japan was aimed at destroying war industries and "dehousing" war workers, somehow without murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. This claim could not be made nearly as well if we were dropping anthrax or nerve gas on cities. Also, there would be the geopolitical considerations of such an action. A stable, inhabited, Japan under US unified control was seen as important. I have got to believe that public opinion would raise questions and cooler heads would prevail. Yes, Japan would be treated far worse, and there would be a much more thorough effort to find and punish war criminals and restructure Japanese society, but realistically, who really believes the US would retaliate by virtually depopulating Japan?
 
OK, I've been as guilty as everybody else talking up the "depopulated japan" outcome, but seriosuly, would this really be politically possible for an open society that believed it was a "shining light" to the world? Regardless of whether we are talking about Japanese use of chemical/biological agents at Pearl Harbor or in balloon bombs, the human damage of either attack would be relatively light. US Propagandists could always claim (and did) that massed USAAF and RAF bombing of Germany and Japan was aimed at destroying war industries and "dehousing" war workers, somehow without murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. This claim could not be made nearly as well if we were dropping anthrax or nerve gas on cities. Also, there would be the geopolitical considerations of such an action. A stable, inhabited, Japan under US unified control was seen as important. I have got to believe that public opinion would raise questions and cooler heads would prevail. Yes, Japan would be treated far worse, and there would be a much more thorough effort to find and punish war criminals and restructure Japanese society, but realistically, who really believes the US would retaliate by virtually depopulating Japan?

Have to agree with other posters that the public guilt later would be heavy.
One benefit though, stalin would be far more cautious towards the allies post war.

The only person in i could imagine sanction the first use of bio weapons is winston "drunken nutcase" churchill.
 
The proposed idea of Japan using chemical or biological weapons on Pearl Harbor does not work at all but the idea of the US being remotely hesitant to retaliate in kind, with tens of thousands of civilians dead in Pearl Harbor, due to concerns about weakening US agit-prop or geopolitical considerations is nothing less than ASB.
 
The proposed idea of Japan using chemical or biological weapons on Pearl Harbor does not work at all but the idea of the US being remotely hesitant to retaliate in kind, with tens of thousands of civilians dead in Pearl Harbor, due to concerns about weakening US agit-prop or geopolitical considerations is nothing less than ASB.

Japan's war strategy was insane... so quite a fair bit is in bounds for them

The US would sure as hell retaliate

The British and American's using bases in China could anthrax the hell out of the home islands and completely eliminate Japanese culture within a matter of weeks
 
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